Calls For Religious Tolerance Can Lead To Resentment

Religion

Much Of The World Opposes The Idea That All Faiths Should Be Equal, Experts Say.

November 24, 2001|By G. Jeffrey Macdonald, Religion News Service

SOUTH BOSTON, Mass. -- Religious tolerance might be an unquestioned virtue in America, but to promote it as a way of life across the globe is apt to breed resentment among numerous local cultures.

That message, though seldom heard in public celebrations of religious diversity, has received serious consideration in recent conferences from a number of religion and international policy experts.

Panelists roundly applauded the goal of promoting religious tolerance abroad, but they acknowledged that the price of doing so is getting higher all the time.

"For Christians, freedom of religious expression means freedom to proselytize, and that isn't anything Muslims are going to embrace anytime soon," said Stephen D. O'Leary, associate professor of communications at the University of Southern California.

"We can expect more conflicts, violence and executions as Christians go out to fulfill the Great Commission [to baptize all nations] and Muslim authorities do the best they can to maintain the integrity of their cultures."

Since extremists killed thousands in New York and Washington on Sept. 11, scholars and policy advisers have puzzled over how to prevent religious terrorism. Promoting religious tolerance has been a favorite suggestion, but those looking closely at the world's complexities expect resistance.

Christian breaches of etiquette might explain some backlashes to religious multiculturalism, but experts say local cultures often oppose religious tolerance for other reasons as well.

Religious groups in rural Africa, for instance, have acquired photocopiers and audiocassette-recording equipment during the past 10 years and used them to overpower opposing voices, according to Rosalind I. J. Hackett, professor of religious studies at the University of Tennessee.

"That's where the hate speech is," Hackett said. "That low-level technology is so empowering, but it's also incredibly dangerous."

O'Leary and Hackett made their comments at a conference on "Challenges of the New Media Order" at Harvard University's Center for the Study of World Religions.

Participants noted how the Internet has enabled some religious minorities, such as the Falun Gong in China, to endure despite opposition.

Meanwhile, the Chinese government also has used a Web presence to condemn the Falun Gong and advance its own communist agenda.

Practical issues aside, much of the world remains philosophically opposed to religious tolerance insofar as such a policy suggests all faiths might be equal and legitimate.

"This is actually a huge debate within Islam," said Professor Leila Ahmed, author of Women and Gender in Islam and an Islamic scholar at Harvard Divinity School.

"Are all religions equal and deserving equal treatment? Or are they less than Islam?" The Muslim world, she said, is deeply divided over how to answer that question.

Ahmed joined a panel at the John F. Kennedy Library here to discuss "Promoting Religious Tolerance in the Face of Religiously Motivated Terrorism."

Before an overflow crowd, the panel once again agreed on the importance of defending the freedom of religious minorities abroad, a long-standing hallmark of U.S. foreign policy.

But how to do so in the many nations that sanction one state religion, unlike the United States, emerged in discussion as a formidably delicate challenge for a country that already has severe image problems overseas.

The United States need not feel obliged to end state-sponsored religion in other countries in order to promote religious tolerance, according to J. Bryan Hehir, a Roman Catholic priest and former dean of the Harvard Divinity School.

"Religious tolerance is not about judging the truth between different religions," Hehir said. "You can install a dominant religion as long as you honor the rights of religious minorities."

Hehir went on to explain that the notion of religious tolerance stems from the assumption that one official, national religion "tolerates" others by not persecuting them. He said the United States ought to "shoot for a higher goal" in which many religious voices are welcome and encouraged.

Whether other countries with very different histories will ever share that vision remains to be seen.

But one thing seems certain: Persuading the world to practice religious tolerance will depend largely on America's ability to win converts to its own belief system, in which tolerance ranks as a virtue.

"Maybe we need to do better at explaining to the world what these democratic truths are," said Andrew Tarsy, civil-rights director of the Anti-Defamation League in Boston.